


Golden Ratio

by Hope



Series: 12 Days of Cliché [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Futurefic, M/M, Romance, fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 19:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things are constants. (A canon-compliant fixit, spanning several centuries.)</p><p>[No spoilers for Doctor Who.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Ratio

**Author's Note:**

> My final work for [](http:)12 Days of Cliché. Thank you to Cupidsbow for cheerleading and beta!
> 
> diane_mckay has recorded [an awesome podfic of this story](http://diane-mckay.livejournal.com/69504.html). Go and listen!

**0**

It shows up on date night.

Jack's slobbering all over Ianto's neck, Ianto's hand kneading in his lap, when Jack's phone gives that particular sound that Toshiko programmed; the one that sort of infers, _it's nothing particularly serious, but it shouldn't be left alone, you can go check it out, can't you Jack?_ in an uninspiring series of blips. Jack groans and Ianto's shoulder cringes up to push him away, the vibration of it tickling against his somewhat sensitised skin.

Jack's tone of frustration gives Ianto a perverse sort of pleasure in itself; if Jack is groaning his complaint at thwarted satisfaction, then Ianto must be doing something right. Yet another way in which his body is responding stupidly to something it oughtn't, and yet another reason it's Jack's fault.

Ianto's as well trained as Jack is to respond to the automated summons, though, and he sits up properly and attempts to set himself to rights when Jack gets up to fetch the phone, trying to get his mind back on a different track. Daniel Craig is still being bruised and charismatic all over his TV screen, albeit with the volume muted. It isn't helping.

"Penarth," Jack says when he comes back into Ianto's living room. His mouth is still red, hair tousled from Ianto's hands. His cock still pokes the white cotton of his shorts out through his open fly. He blinks blearily at the phone. "Should take us half an hour, at most."

Ianto gets up, adjusts himself, then crosses the room to Jack. Jack pouts a little, like he's expecting a kiss, but Ianto just carefully zippers him back up and gives him a pat. "You get the car keys, I'll get the coats."

The heater in the SUV hasn't warmed to even a mildly comfortable degree in the short drive to Penarth. Temperature aside, the change from inside to outside as Ianto clambers out of the car is, as they say, _bracing_. The esplanade road is otherwise deserted, street lights illuminating the dirty bitumen and making the pointed green caps of the Pier building glow. The smell of it is different too; wet salt in the air a striking difference from Cardiff Bay, a few scant miles away.

The sound of their footsteps is amplified by the wooden decking, and then overwhelmed by the crunch of water against the rocky shore, and the buffeting of the harsh wind against the folds of Ianto's ears. The Pier juts ahead of them like a plank from a pirate ship, and thick, invisible cloud blindfolds the sparse starlight above. Ianto fondles the torch in his pocket, warming the anodised metal with his fist, reluctant to take it out before Jack's taken out his.

Then he rolls his eyes at himself, takes his torch out and flicks it on. The beam demystifies the blackness around them immediately, Ianto almost feels a surge of pity for what the unforgiving beam reveals; just over-painted, salt-eroded ironwork and stained wooden boards underfoot. He's not sure he's ever seen the Pier with no one on it, before. It's unexpectedly desolate.

"We should be here in the daytime," Jack says.

Ianto shakes himself out of the reverie, then wraps his coat tighter. He pretends he doesn't know what Jack's talking about, concentrating instead on how disturbed he is by the fact that these days Jack's tendency to launch into the middle of conversation without context or explanation isn't as confounding as it used to be.

Actually, no, that isn't as diverting a diversion as he ought to have gone for, there.

Because he does know what Jack's talking about. He's seen the photos of Jack and Estelle Cole posing on the Pier, Jack's brylcreamed hair that is in not in any way adorable, and his ridiculously excited smile. And he knows Jack suggested Tosh bring Tommy here, on their final romantic outing.

Ianto shudders, the night wind whipping off the dark water and flinging itself against the Pier, and, it feels like, straight through all the gaps in his clothing. He almost expects the straight beam of his torch to waver from the force of it. _Romantic._

He startles at the sudden pressure and warmth against his back, Jack's hand clapping him on the shoulder, then rubbing briskly. Jack's coat lashes Ianto's legs. "It's more romantic in the daytime," Jack shouts, the wind ripping the words from his lips and flinging them away before Ianto can more than half-hear them.

Ianto scowls, but keeps his head turned away, then forces the expression off his face guiltily. He's not quite sure why it's all right to be necking on the sofa like a pair of teenagers while the very _idea_ of strolling on the pier and sharing an icecream is unbearable, but— oh, god. _Sharing an icecream._

He pulls away from Jack, paces determinedly against the wind. They've only been lingering around the Pier buildings, reluctant to step onto the more exposed jut of decking, but it's time to get down to actual business, now. The sooner they find what they came for, the sooner they can just go back home. "Look harder," Ianto shouts, not bothering to turn around, relying on the wind to carry the words back behind him.

He's made it all the way to the end of the Pier and found nothing but discarded fishhooks, minutely macabre in the unwavering beam of his torch, when he sees Jack lean close to examine something white and flimsy flapping frantically in the edge of an icecream stand window. Jack plucks it away from the window—a piece of paper, perhaps—then holds it up, waving it and giving Ianto a pointed look before turning and walking back towards the shore.

Ianto speeds his pace and meets Jack by the Pier building, and they tuck together under an insufficient awning to examine the find.

It's an envelope, and Ianto's heart stops when Jack turns it over in the column of torchlight.

It's addressed to Jack. And it's in Ianto's handwriting.

Jack recognises it too, of course. "You didn't tell me we were having a treasure hunt," he says, not entirely flippantly.

Ianto's grateful for the opening, what with his throat being stoppered up with all the _oh god oh god_s jostling to emerge. The wind shoves relentlessly against his back, and the aggressive chill of the wind has sunk its hooks into him, turning his body's core into brittle ice.

"I didn't send it," he says, voice calm, beyond his control. "And I didn't _leave_ it here either, so…" _Oh god, oh god_. It's ridiculous. He shouldn't be feeling this… This _panicked_. This guilty. Like he's hiding something from Jack. Because he's not, _god_, he's not; he _hates_ feeling like this.

He didn't send the letter. But it's unmistakably from him.

"Could someone forge your handwriting?" Jack asks, all lightness shed from his tone, serious business, now.

Ianto shakes his head, he'd know, and he _knows_; and as Jack begins to turn the envelope over again the solid tightness in Ianto's throat surges up in alarm— "Don't— Don't open it."

Jack pauses, looks at Ianto instead of the letter, expectant.

"Sir," Ianto says, trying to put as much feeling as he can into it without straying out of professional territory. It's like teetering on the edge of a chasm. "Please."

Jack gives a brief nod and the letter goes into his inside pocket. As if it's having some detectable physical affect on Ianto, the tension clutching his chest eases—though certainly not vanishing entirely, not by half—as the envelope is removed from his sight. "Thank you," he says.

Jack spreads his hands open, as if inferring that he had no choice in the matter. "I get it," he says. "A paradox is the last thing we need."

Ah. Ianto nods in sombre agreement; let it not be said that he won't take what he's given. Still, it's _Jack_; he's indestructible, and his curiosity's indestructible too. Ianto's twelve previously-undiscovered erogenous zones stand testimony to that, if nothing else. It's not that he doesn't _trust_ Jack to keep his word, but— Well. See above.

Jack squirms his hand into Ianto's armpit as they walk briskly back down the Pier, tucking in close. The gesture should be happily invisible in the dark, but Ianto feels like he can _sense_ the dreadful presence of the letter through the touch, sitting alarmingly close to Jack's chest.

They break contact when they get back to the car, but the shroud of anxiety that's fallen over Ianto remains. The dim gold of the interior light illuminates them briefly when they get in, then it shuts off when Jack turns the key in the ignition and the dash lights up, glowing an alien blue.

There's only one thing Ianto would write in a letter to Jack. Committing it to paper in his diary is one thing, but he curses whatever self decided it was a good idea to put an _address_ on it.

"Jack," he says, before he realises he was going to say it. Jack turns to him, expression openly expectant. "Don't open it," Ianto says again, and blunders on, "…Promise you won't open it."

Jack lifts an eyebrow. "Okay," he says, clearly not quite _getting it_, but that's okay. Ianto's perfectly fine with that. Jack will forget this moment, one day, but as long as Ianto's not aware of just when that day is, maybe he can handle it.

*

**1**

It's the end of another week that's left Ianto feeling like time has crumpled in on itself; it feels like he can't remember a time that the three of them haven't been soldiering on in damage control, but at the same time the immediacy of—of Tosh, and Owen, and Hart and Gray—breathes heavily at their backs. He can't ever recall the details of half of what occurred this week, surely it can't have been seven _days_ since Sunday. He might have asked Jack, once, idle chatter of exhaustion as they wound down together, but the words stick in his throat, now. Like he sticks in Jack's bunker, lingering by setting Jack's discarded clothes to rights while Jack's in the shower. He might as well be miles away.

Once upon a time Ianto might have joined him, but not so much of late. In part because he doesn't feel the need to get clean several times a day as Jack now does, but also because— well. Jack has always been good at projecting space around himself; whether that was a welcoming sort that drew you in or a brash one that made you back down before it. Now the tiny cubicle in the bathroom off his quarters fills with the enclosed tension that clings around him, not icy but… not anything Ianto can step into, really. Unlike Jack's usual moods; it's one that's entirely introspective.

It spreads out from the epicentre that is Jack and Jack's silence, creeping under the closed door of the bathroom along with the steam, and Ianto escapes the choking humidity, scooping up Jack's coat and climbing the ladder back up to Jack's office.

He's been too hurried, and the limbs of the coat are tangled; Ianto shakes it out to straighten it as he walks towards the stand in the corner, and the movement sends a creeping rattle of sound against the floor.

Ianto frowns, pausing, unsure of the cause of the noise until he looks down and sees the dirt, tiny dark flecks of earth and broken bits of stone against the worn floor. And—his heart seizes in his chest as if it reaches recognition before he does—tiny broken bits of coat as well, small swatches of felted wool, rotted at the edges.

The floor is hard against his knees, the sting of his kneecaps being ground between bone and concrete shocking through him. The bits of fabric practically disintegrate against his fingertips when he reaches out to them, and the coat still heaped in his arms feels abruptly and terrifyingly fragile.

It's not, though; he knows it's not, not with the workouts Jack's been putting it through for the past few weeks. Ianto touches the dirt, too, and the hard bits of stone almost graze his skin; he's swept through it with more force than necessary, as if it hadn't occurred to him that— that they were real.

He shoves his hands into the pockets of the coat, feeling sick, seeking more proof even while it feels like his skin is shrinking away from it; when he pulls them inside out more dirt spills onto the floor, and when Ianto crushes the coat to his face it smells like dirt too, grimy at the back of his throat, dead and dry.

It smells like Jack and it smells _wrong_, as wrong as Jack lying in the dark next to him and telling him in a voice as hollow and dusty as an empty room, _two thousand years in the ground_. As long as Ianto keeps his face pressed against the coat he doesn't have to leave this moment, doesn't have to process it and move on in a world in which he knows that, in which it _happened_, in which the man it happened to is someone Ianto is responsible for. He's been in that moment since Jack told him, really. Of course it would be the bloody coat that forced him to actually _deal_ with it.

He's so weary of grief, though, and of guilt; and of the helplessness that sinks in down to his bones, an ache that makes him feel like he's been alive four times as long as he actually has. Ianto struggles to his feet again, one hand gripping the edge of the desk, the other arm still holding the coat to his chest like it's a child. The raw sound of water still runs in the background as Jack showers, and Ianto shoves hands into the coat's pockets again, pulling them out and striking the dirt out of them, yanking at each seam and fold, beating at the skirts with the flat of his palm. Gone is the fear for its fragility, god, he _hopes_ he destroys it, shocks it into falling apart. Its feels all the more possible now that Jack's out of it; anything that stays in contact with him for long enough seems to become just as impervious to harm as Jack himself is, but that thought leaves a bitter taste in Ianto's mouth now rather than its usual reassurance. He wants this reminder of it gone, wants it to break apart in his hands so he can just go and find a new one to slip onto Jack's shoulders in the morning, he's done it before—

Amidst the muted sounds of abused fabric, the faint crackle of paper being crushed is enough to make Ianto stop. He can't get enough air into his chest, which is ridiculous, because his actions had been brisk at most; he shouldn't be feeling as if he's just climbed bloody Snowdon. He squeezes panels of the coat until the paper sounds again. He can feel it, this time, stiffer than the shrouding material, and Ianto feels the kind of amazement he should have felt the first time: the lining of the coat feels thin, delicate, but it's incredibly in-tact.

He sinks his hand into the inner breast pocket and his touch gentles when he feels the soft brittleness of what's inside; he withdraws again with a degree more care.

It's an envelope. Its familiarity strikes him before he even turns it over to see the address, and after he does he can't take any breath in at all for a moment, his chest flooded again with the same worried intensity he'd felt the first time he'd seen it.

_C.J.Harkness_ it's addressed to in Ianto's black-inked scrawl. That alone had been enough to convince him the first time that it wasn't a forgery; the initials a reference to a joke, a goad; that _Captain_ wasn't a rank with Jack so much as just part of his name. Jack hadn't entirely got the humour of that, something which gave Ianto victorious delight every time his thoughts revisited it.

Ianto lifts it to his face, as if he can gain some further information from the smell of it as well; it smells more like Jack than the coat does, which isn't surprising considering how close it's been sitting against Jack's skin for— for _two thousand years_.

It's been months since Ianto's even _thought_ about it. He wishes, not for the first time, for Jack's enhanced senses as he breathes in with the paper held to his nose and mouth— had he been carrying it all along? In Ianto's wildest, most hopeful fantasies, Jack took the paradox threat seriously, and locked it away in the secure archives, never to be seen again. His more realistic assumption had been that Jack had opened it once the earnestness of Ianto's entreaty not to had faded from his immediate memory, or that Jack would put it out of sight in a drawer somewhere, to be discovered by some future secretary, some decades after Ianto's death. _He'd_ discovered things in Jack's desk along those lines, so it hadn't been an entirely fanciful construction.

The envelope is unopened. Ianto watches his fingers stroke over the firmly-affixed flap of paper as if coaxing out the memory of it being sealed, even as it doesn't come he still can't convince himself that it's from— from somewhere else. Some_when_ else. That it's still _closed_ is fantastical enough.

The soft sound of the shower running below the office cuts off, and Ianto hooks the collar of the coat on his hand to allow it to fall straight again, the movement automatic. He hangs it up on its usual branch of the coat stand, then reaches into its folds again to locate the inner pocket by touch, slotting the envelope back into it.

Then he smoothes his own lapels down over the rawness of his chest and climbs back down the ladder.

*

**1**

It's the atmosphere on Omicron IV that does it. It's potent enough to leave a rime of sodium chloride on Jack's flight goggles after each jump, and in hindsight, does explain the planet's bloodied hematite surface.

The locals don't dress conservatively so much as _cleverly_ (this also occurs to him in hindsight), fibres designed to withstand and resist the near-acidity of the atmosphere. Their skin is too, no doubt. Probably one of the reasons it feels so good in friction against human skin. In fact, it's likely Jack's been healing himself on a daily basis without even realising.

That in itself is not enough difference to cause any problems, but living beyond the federation-allotted lifespan is, and it gets him jettisoned off the planet, in the end. Jack doesn't mind so much, it was a good run, and he gets to keep the goggles.

When he gets to the nearest orbital hotel—Lambda deLux, camped up to the gills in delusions of grandeur, just how Jack likes it—he purchases a room for one cycle, grinning guilelessly at the suckered face of distaste the clerk makes at his choice. It's been a long time since he's had enough possessions to merit a suite, smaller spaces have long been the most comfortable.

He dials his wrist strap into the hotel's transportation network and uses the unique code the clerk's given him to set coordinates for the room. When he gets there his steamer trunk has arrived already, waiting in the internally-lit niche that Jack has always, or at least since living through the 20th century on Earth, thought of as the dumb-waiter. He feels a wave of fondness upon seeing it, despite the fact that he had it with him in the lobby moments before; every time he sees it in a new setting it's like turning around to see an old friend, familiar fondness and the warm comfort of the memories it contains.

He runs his hands over it. Its surface feels pitted, moreso than usual, and the anti-grav gears whine a little pitifully when Jack engages them; it half-limps to the luggage rack before collapsing onto it with a pitiful creak. The jump goggles are still in the pocket of his leather flight jacket, and he strips the whole thing off and tosses it haphazardly in the direction of the clothes rack to avoid crushing them when he drops to his knees, hands back on the trunk immediately, running over the brackets and their worn-smooth bolts.

A light crust of white crystals crumbles from the edge of the lid as he eases it open, and he can't stop the low cry of dismay when he sees the inside; the wrappings of each item buckled and shrivelled, white traceries creeping over them, the smell that wafts up damp and potent with salt. He lifts out each package carefully; some already too fragile to stand his touch, disintegrating in his fingers. This is ritual, this meditative handling; touching and remembering each keepsake—but this enactment is corrupted, the entire process turned into a cruel sham. It's as if the items are destroyed by his recollection alone; each touch sparks a memory that collapses on itself and is erased within moments of contact.

By the time Jack reaches the bottom of the trunk he's shaking, salt taste in his mouth and wet on his face, the hotel room around him just another cage he's filled with a wake of debris. He half expects to lift out the final package and find himself at the bottom, fingers shying away from that last, fatal touch that wipes out all but immortality.

The final package is in oilcloth, though. The wrapping is brittle, but doesn't break when Jack touches; he lifts it out as carefully as a baby, memories sneaking back at each new sensory input it delivers, as if terrified it'll fall apart if they rush in too fast.

He remembers wrapping it, now, and just how much that damn oilcloth had _cost_ him in an economy of rarity, orbiting an aqua planet on a smuggler's vessel, loss still hollow in his chest. It was before he even had the steamer trunk. No wonder it had ended up lining it.

Jack sets the package gently on the sleeping platform and runs his hands over the oilcloth again, then holds his breath while he unwraps it.

The muted blue seems more vibrant than the garish, solar-influenced decoration of the room around him, and after years spent in an acidic atmosphere the thick felt of the woollen fabric is soft, so soft under his hesitant touch.

It's amazing that it survived at all; though Jack suspects with a kind of sinking relief that the amount of time its spent in proximity to him during its lifetime has something to do with that. He'd been focused too much on how the _people_ he surrounded him with had their lives cut short, hadn't recognised how the effects of his longevity seeped out to the inanimate things around him, not until much later. It was probably what kept this coat's predecessor so unbelievably in tact in the face of millennia underground.

More guilt, then, in that the steamer trunk has gone unopened for this long. His neglect is just as much to blame for the destruction of its contents as the air of Omicron IV.

He makes a conscious effort to push the feeling away with another memory. As he slides his fingers under one of the epaulettes, he remembers when Ianto got him this coat, remembers how new and solid it had felt when Ianto helped him shrug it on for the first time. Remembers, with a rush of sensory recollection that makes his shoulders shiver and hunch, the feel of Ianto's hands smoothing from the centre of his back to his shoulders.

The coat had always been an affectation, a security blanket, he recognises that now—recognised it then, even, when wearing it had stopped being a sign of rank and become an anachronism—but in that moment it had settled upon him like a mantle of responsibility, undeniably tangible.

He closes his eyes but still keeps his hands on the coat; the loss of most of the rest of the trunk's contents bundling with the recollection of this old loss, rolling together tinder-dry and brittle in the base of his chest, starting to smoulder. There are good memories, too; he makes himself replay that moment again, the coat settling over him and Ianto's hands easing its way, the touch warm and assured against Jack's back. _I am here._ And everything that had come to mean.

Jack presses his hands against the coat, just faintly warmed by his own body heat, and smoothes his hands over it in a replication of Ianto's ancient touch. The smoulder in his chest kindles and his touch tightens until he's gripping the fabric fiercely; then he falls back onto the sleeping platform and pulls the coat over him, a cover that heats instantly, wool prickling against his bare arms, silken lining caressing his face. It tastes like salt when he opens his mouth and presses his tongue against it, and when he breathes in it smells like salt and something else, like a tangible memory; it smells like _him_. It'll probably be this that destroys it, fragile as it is already, but at least it'll be on Jack's terms.

He doesn't realise he's fallen asleep until he comes awake again, sweating profusely under the insulating layer. Even then he's not immediately aware, first instinct to get rid of the irritation; he flops his arms over it, starts to crush and shove it away when the sound of crackling paper stops him. Still muzzy with sleep, eyes feeling hot and worn, throat raw, Jack fumbles against the fabric until his hand slips into an opening in the lining, butts against the smooth paper surface inside.

He sits up, not relinquishing his grip but shaking the coat off to pool in his lap.

It's an envelope. And it's addressed to him. In Cardiff, no less.

He turns it over, but there's no return address, just the blank, still-sealed flap. Turning it back he examines the writing more closely. Both the paper and ink are discoloured by the passage of years, and Jack runs his hands over the scrawl of the address as if he can wipe away the accumulated time, and his contemplation of it sparks a memory—of doing this before, many times before.

He remembers. Remembers Ianto's reaction when they had found it, Ianto's fearful desperation that he had managed to quite adeptly mask, but still, Jack knew. It wasn't often that Ianto demanded promises from him. And it was more that than anything that made Jack keep it—well, of course Jack would keep it; but made him keep it _close_, and—

He thought it'd been destroyed. He'd kept it in his coat pocket, but this was not that coat; Ianto must have… Must have _pinched_ it from him, and the sound of Jack's own laughter echoing into the room startles him; he swipes a shaky hand over his brow.

And turns the envelope over. And slides his thumbs into the open edges of the flap, the paper giving easily, soft from millennia of wear, yielding to Jack's gentle urging.

There's a piece of paper inside, surprisingly sturdy for all the fragility of the envelope that had enclosed it. As Jack unfolds it, the same familiar black-inked scrawl fades into existence upon its previously-blank surface.

_TOOK YOU BLOODY LONG ENOUGH. YOU CAN COME AND FETCH ME ANY TIME, NOW._

*

**2**

"Jack!" the man says, and then, "Jackie boy! Jack, Jack, Jackie!" And that's how Jack knows it's the Doctor.

Jack raises an eyebrow; it's not as if he's particularly averse to being called _boy_, but they've had this conversation before, the one about how Jack's more than twice as old as the Doctor in his linear timeline, now. The Doctor doesn't notice, or if he does, he doesn't care; Jack suspects the latter is more likely than the former.

"Tidy little mousetrap you set up here. But didn't I program in a direct line back after that Alpha Centauri business, hmm?" He's come far enough into Jack's personal space to drum his fingers against Jack's wrist strap, exposed by his ridden-up sleeve as he folds his arms firmly.

"How do you think I found you?" Jack says. "And what the hell are you _doing_ here?" He presses his arms tighter against his chest, offsets the vulnerability of the pose by widening his shoulders a little.

"Ah, now," the Doctor says. "If you don't _know_ then that means maybe you're from the wrong _timeline_, but that doesn't make sense, since—" He frowns in acquiescence as Jack taps the wrist strap this time, pointedly with his index finger. "—Yes. That bit of programming."

And it _doesn't_ make sense. If the communication beacon they engineered between the TARDIS and Jack's wrist strap includes clauses for avoiding crossed timelines and resulting paradoxes, then they shouldn't _be_ here.

Jack's ship can't travel in time. And yet, he knows this place, and knows the _when_ of it too; destroyed in 2009, hundreds of years past. Rebuilt, yes, but not wholesale re-creation like this, which makes it all the more _wrong_.

Torchwood Three's archives. More specifically, F-H, Unknown Artifacts Indexed by Description.

"I suppose," the Doctor's saying, "that we didn't account for static anomalies when rigging that up, which is all for the best, really, because it means you're _here_ now and if you can get _in_ then maybe you can get _out_, because I got in here too, you know, like a mouse to a bit of cheese, as I said before, but _you_, _you're_ a fixed point and should be able to prick the bubble—"

"Cheese?" Jack cuts him off. "Prick?"

"Temporal cheese anomaly. Fromage d'paradox. Something not-quite-right in your, your _stash_ down here, caught my eye. Nose. Eye." He wrinkles his nose. At least he stops at twitching his non-existant whiskers.

"This isn't my stash any more," Jack asserts, feeling more and more agitated with every passing moment; from the psychic paper to finding the Doctor _here_, to everything in between those points, and to—no, not having any hope. Decidedly not having any hope.

"Well, it was when whatever caused this happened." The Doctor gestures around them. "The evidence is irrefutable. The bubble was caused at this moment, that's why we're living out the loop here."

_We?_ Jack wants to ask. _Loop?_ But the Doctor's walking away, still chattering, and Jack has no choice but to follow, the adrenalised unease rising in his throat, settling hot under his tongue. It only increases as the Doctor reaches for an artifact left discarded on one of the dusty old tables as he passes it, not even sparing it a glance as he does so. Its descriptive tag flutters on a bit of string as it swings through the air on the end of the Doctor's hooked finger, paper yellowed and tiny writing too far away for Jack to see.

It sets off a possessive instinct in Jack's hindbrain that he thought he'd left behind long ago. He can almost feel his old Webley strapped to his side, the brush of the coat skirt against his legs; this, this dusty, dark space ribbed with shelves and compactors is _his_ territory.

"Stop," he says, almost shouts it, really. The Doctor turns back, and over his shoulder, Jack can see the TARDIS, looking like just another artifact, dim and grimy, fading into the background mosaic of dead, alphabetised technology.

The letter feels hot in Jack's pocket; burning with the months Jack's spent trying to trace its origins on his own before deciding to resort to TARDIS technology. Each step on that path is like another barrier between him and what he might eventually find at the letter's source—because that's what he needs, really. That's what he fears he'll need; crash barriers, safety lines, Hemingprovarian life preservers to cushion him against the blow of disappointment that he's convinced himself is inevitable.

All of that balances precariously on this moment, though; with this _where_ and this _when_, Jack can't avoid thinking about it any longer. He's on the edge of the abyss, after centuries spent dragging himself out of it. He jumps.

Slides the envelope from his pocket, holds it up between two fingers. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about this, would you?"

The Doctor squints back in Jack's direction, and then his expression shifts and he walks back towards Jack at a skip, smile gathering in the corners of his mouth and then growing exponentially. "Oh, yes," he says, examining it closely without touching, Jack still holding it aloft. "Hah! Psychic paper, yes?"

Jack swallows. "Yes. What—"

"Right, well, that's brilliant. But we can't be having two of them floating around, we're precarious enough is it is—paradox in a paradox! Paradox squared. Can't be too careful."

He lifts his sonic screwdriver and holds it to the envelope. It whines briefly, and then there's a faint _fwoomf_ and the paper flares into flame; Jack yelps at the sudden heat and lets go of it automatically, then stares down at the flare of flame in horror—it's almost entirely ash already. The pain from the burn surges up his arm and into his chest, but there's nothing he can do. It's gone.

"You." He stops, swallows again, sharpness in his throat.

The Doctor's grinning at him, looking very pleased with himself. The expression stings almost as much as the loss of the letter, and Jack closes his eyes briefly.

"I know what you're thinking," the Doctor says. "Haha—psychic paper, funny that—but you're thinking, 'Could this thing always do that?'" He holds up the sonic screwdriver, looks at it admiringly. "The answer, Jackie-boy, is no. But necessity is the mother of invention, as they're fond of saying. And when the igniter stops working on the gas stove, well, that's necessity."

Jack follows him back to the TARDIS as if there's a leash connecting them, the Doctor chattering about kitchen modifications and how half the devices in F-H, Unknown Artifacts Indexed by Description _aren't_ dead but just waiting for the right sort of zap, and how tiresome it is to have to zap each one afresh at the start of every loop, "And maybe, and I think this is it, that the right sort of zap for the TARDIS is a captain zap, a Captain Zap Harkness, though probably not in the way _you're_ thinking, old boy…"

Jack spares a moment to thank his younger self for deciding that a few centuries shut up in the police box with the Doctor was _not_, in fact, a good idea, especially not if it ran the risk of overlapping with this regeneration, but then he steps inside and his thoughts are immediately derailed. The TARDIS is _wrong_, walls that normally pulse with life are dim and wan, the central column frozen mid-plunge and glowing a sickly green.

"See what I mean?" the Doctor shouts from across the room, then immediately drops to the floor, crawling through a gap under the control panel. "She knows you're here, though," he calls back cheerfully, voice echoing like there's a massive open space behind the tangle of wires, rather than just more wires. "I think you're zapping just by being here!"

Several minutes pass, and when the Doctor shoots out from beneath the console again, he seems surprised to find Jack still standing there. "You know your way around still, don't you?" he asks, and then, before Jack can answer, "He's probably in the kitchen. Setting up the Canephorian combustion skillet again. Could probably do it in his sleep, by now!" The Doctor kicks himself back below the console.

Jack grips one of the supports for balance, the porous surface sucking faintly at the moisture gathered in his palm. With the TARDIS so lifeless around him he feels frozen in the moment; as if she has a grip on him rather than the other way around, and that's why he can't move. The Doctor's still making busy sounds from beneath the console, though, breaking the illusion that it's temporally impossible for Jack to continue, and then the next thing Jack knows he's standing in the corridor that spokes out from the control room with no memory of how he got there.

The corridor feels faintly more alive than the control room, the walls lit with a soft glow from below, smooth and skin-like beneath Jack's dragging touch as he walks. He can't hear the noise the Doctor's making any more, but he can hear another faint sound; an arrhythmic clicking from somewhere up ahead. It becomes clearer when Jack nears an open doorway in the bend of the corridor, and when he looks in he sees Ianto, standing with his back to the door, thumb pressed against the spark igniter on an old gas stove.

"Fuck," Ianto hisses, jamming his thumb viciously against the button a few more times before giving up. He steps back. His chest expands as he takes a deep breath—satin back of his waistcoat shifting over the swell of his shoulders—then looks briefly heavenwards. "Doctor!" he bellows, then turns around.

The urge to smirk at the expression on Ianto's face can't be realised; it crests along the wave of familiarity that floods through Jack, an automatic reaction that slots into place instantaneously. He's fallen instantly, back into knowing Ianto, knowing the patterns of their cause and effect, spinning into play again the moment he's back in Ianto's orbit.

"It's you," Ianto says at last, and Jack blinks as the moment snaps back into place; he feels a little disoriented to discover that Ianto's still standing at the opposite side of the kitchen. Well, it's more of a kitchenette, really. That said, Jack's not sure that it was when he first stepped into its door, moments ago.

He grins, though. He can do that much. Effortlessly. He spreads his hands out, presenting himself. "It's me."

"You're wearing leather trousers," Ianto says, and _then_ he stalks towards Jack, of course. Well, maybe not _stalks_, but his gait is very determined. Jack almost wants to do a twirl to show off the trousers in their entirety, such is the admiration in Ianto's gaze, but that would require looking away from Ianto, and he's not entirely ready for that yet.

Ianto stops in front of him, close enough for Jack to smell, and to see the faint shadow of Ianto's beard considering making an appearance. The scent and the suit are familiar; Jack has an ingrained sense memory of seeing that dark pinstripe hung amidst his own blue shirts, it and the cologne kept in Jack's quarters to use when Ianto slept at the Hub. Centuries ago. It doesn't make sense.

Ianto reaches up to rub Jack's collar between his fingertips, and his knuckles brush against the edge of Jack's jaw. Jack sucks in a sharp breath.

"Nice jacket, too," Ianto says, not moving back again; his touch still against the side of Jack's throat in the pretence of examination.

Jack's eyes dart down Ianto's throat; his shirt is open and tie-less, waistcoat unbuttoned and hanging loose against his sides. Jack grabs the edges of it and doesn't bother with excuses, just drags Ianto the last few inches to press his body firmly against Jack's.

Ianto's real. Body undeniably solid, moving with his short, deep breaths, heavy weight leaning against Jack from thigh to chest. He stares into Jack's eyes for a moment longer, then the curl of his knuckles unfurls and he grips the side of Jack's jaw, pulls Jack's mouth against his.

Real, very real, and Jack matches Ianto's complete lack of hesitancy with his own, mouth watering at the human taste of Ianto's saliva, pushing in kind against the half-desperate, half-combative strokes of Ianto's tongue.

Ianto pulls back and their mouths give a wet _smack_ upon separation; Jack finds his hand on the back of Ianto's neck to draw him in again but Ianto tilts into the touch instead, eyes slipping half shut.

"It's you," Jack says, eyes hungrily taking in that particular angle of Ianto's jaw that he'd thought he'd _never see again_; unable to keep the tone of awe out of his voice and frankly, not seeing why he should bother.

Ianto's lovely pink mouth bends into a smile. "It's me," he says, spreading his hands against the sides of Jack's face in a more intimate mimic of Jack's earlier pose.

Jack laughs, tightens his grip and—

Ianto disappears. One moment he's unavoidably, tangibly under Jack's touch and the next Jack's stumbling into empty space, still gasping. He looks around wildly, heart machine-gunning in his chest until he thinks he's going to topple. He scrapes his throat raw with a shout of denial.

"What's going on in here? Are you decent?" The Doctor's voice sounds from behind and Jack wheels around then follows the movement through, shoving the Doctor awkwardly against the door frame. "Ah," the Doctor says; still talking, of course, when Jack still can't form coherent speech through the shards of glass blocking his throat. "Right, yes—" He looks mildly concerned, though not concerned _enough_; his gaze wanders over Jack's shoulder, taking in the room before returning to Jack's face. "The loop! It's that time already, it's taken all our appliances back, see?"

Jack looks back to the kitchen but whether it's different or not, he can't tell. He tightens his fist in the Doctor's robes. "Where is he?"

"He's back outside, of course. Did you not get up to explaining that bit, then? How inconvenient!"

He shoves the Doctor aside and stumbles out, to the control room and then beyond, to the dead, impervious dust of Torchwood Three's archives, circa the early 21st century.

Ianto's standing in the Fa-Fe aisle, his back to Jack again. His shoulders are heaving, under a suit jacket now, and his hands cover his face.

"Ianto."

Ianto turns, misery writ over his face, body clad in full finery with his waistcoat buttoned and tie in place, and Jack strides forward again. "I'm sorry," Ianto says. "I hate this. I fucking _hate_ this. I never meant for this to happen."

"What happened?" Jack demands, beyond time for him to do so.

Ianto heaves in a deep, unhappy breath and gestures to the table nearby—Jack hadn't so much as glanced at it, but he looks now, sees an artifact on it, the same one the Doctor had made off with when Jack first arrived. It's on the same table it was before, despite the fact that Jack had watched it being carried it into the TARDIS not an hour earlier.

"The Doctor says its some kind of—bubble, loop, thing." Ianto rolls his eyes, a desperate kind of exasperation stripping the gesture of any sarcasm. "This thing did it. And I've been stuck here ever since. The Doctor came along before I went too mad—" He shares a wry, wavering glance with Jack. "—But he told me—he didn't come to rescue me. _You_ wouldn't come to rescue me." He closes his eyes, keeps talking, voice becoming less smooth as he continues. "It's not me that's stuck here. It's some, some _splinter_ of me, a me who could have been." He opens his eyes again, looks straight at Jack with naked desperation. "He says that the real me is dead."

"Ianto," Jack says, as if to stop Ianto from talking, though his halting explanations have already severed into silence. It's starting to make sense, now. The disbelief and grief looming dark falls back against the tiniest spark of hope. He needs to know, though— "What date is it? For you?"

Ianto huffs, as if in amusement. "The 25th of June," he says. "Thursday. 2009." He sucks in another breath, exhaling hard immediately. "Over and over. I don't know how long."

"And every loop—"

"Sets me back here. To the start, when I touched it." He gestures at the artifact on the table again. "And everything else in the bubble back to this moment as well. The TARDIS doesn't revert, but it wasn't here when this started, so I don't know… Don't even know why I _remember_ each time, really…"

"It was never meant to work on sentient life forms," Jack interjects, and Ianto looks at him as if surprised.

"You know what this is?"

"The Doctor didn't tell you?"

"He— tried to explain." Ianto waves a hand in the air, the other pushing his jacket back to rest on his hip. "I can't understand half of what he says, gave up trying years ago, it feels like."

"It's an archival device. It preserves micro-habitats, a limited physical and temporal scope. For study, or just cultural preservation."

"But— What about me?" Ianto's voice drops nearer to a whisper. "Am I dead?"

Jack swallows. "It must be defective, to capture sentient life in its scope. How it works is—it's a temporal device. It captures a possible future of the subject in its scope, usually the most innocuous one it can lock on to, so there's little to no change. Then it loops it. Perpetual normality."

"So I'm— a possibility."

"An instant of one, yes. The possibility that on June 25, 2009, you were here in the archives, alive. That's the moment that's being replayed. A day in the life, as it were."

Ianto turns his back to Jack again, and half-sits, half-leans against the table, like the weight of standing is too much. He curls forward, shoulders hunching. Jack steps closer, but stops short of touching distance.

"There's another me," Ianto says, softer. "One who took another possibility."

"Who came out of the archives and carried on," Jack agrees.

Ianto passes a hand over his face. "Which is why there was no rescue effort, I suppose."

Jack says nothing, surge of sympathetic pain twisting in his belly.

"I died," Ianto says.

Jack says nothing.

Ianto turns his head, not facing Jack directly again, but at least giving Jack a view of his profile. "It's been a long time, for you," he says. "I can tell."

"I got your letter."

Ianto laughs, then, like it's been startled out of him, and then he covers his face with both of his hands as if he's trying to push the sound back in.

"God, don't tell me what it says," he moans, muffled. "The Doctor just told me to—to concentrate." He breathes heavily for a few moments. "I didn't even know if it would work," he mumbles. "I told you not to open it. Didn't tell him that," he amends sheepishly.

"Well, it worked," Jack says, and he comes to stand in front of Ianto, grasping Ianto's wrists, uncovering his face.

Ianto tilts it up to him, and he looks devastated. "What happens to me now? Will you pop the bubble? Will this possibility cease to exist?"

Jack tightens his grip, pulls Ianto's hands towards him, places them on his hips. Ianto holds on, and Jack rocks forward a little, answering the unspoken in those raw questions as well. _I haven't forgotten you. I won't. I don't want to._

"Not happening," he says shortly. If the Doctor is right about his _zaps_ and being a fixed point is enough to jumpstart a repeating possibility into a traversable reality, then Jack can be fixed about this point, as well.

"Well," Ianto says, a hint of humour creeping back into his tone, as if Jack's brief verbal reassurance is all he needs. As if he _trusts_ Jack, wholly. Jack's forgotten what it's like for someone to rely on him in such a way; it's heady, he wants more of it.

Ianto's fingers rub against the buttery leather of Jack's trousers, spreading warmth onto the skin below. "Will you at least help the Doctor get out of here? I'm not sure how much longer I can stand him."

Jack laughs. Then he cups Ianto's face in his hands and kisses him again, keeping his eyes open this time, not convinced he's not going to vanish again. The tension around Ianto's eyes goes smooth in surrender, jaw dropping open and not fighting for control, this time. He lets Jack take over and Jack does, using his position to push down, to hold Ianto's head at the angle he wants it, to take his time, to taste.

They're both breathing hard when he lets up. Ianto's knees grip Jack's legs where he stands between them, his hands splayed around Jack's hips and holding firm. "I had sex with the Doctor," Ianto says.

Jack's eyebrows lift. "I had sex with an eight-limbed Polastrinian pirate," he says. "Okay?"

Ianto relaxes a little more, even seeming a touch intrigued. "Oh yes." He pulls Jack down for another kiss.

"You beat me to it, by the way," Jack says when they pull apart again, then pauses, thinks. "You probably paved the way. The one I had was a later regeneration, I think." He drops another quick kiss. "Thank you."

Ianto laughs again, and his hands slide down to grab at Jack's arse. "To be honest, it's one of the only ways to shut him up," he confesses.

*

**3**

Something rouses Jack from his doze, his drifting mind dismissing it from his short-term memory before it can carry over into consciousness. Jack blinks, takes in the feel of the blankets swaddled tight around him, the drool wetting his cheek and the pillow beneath it. He extracts an arm, flops it out; it encounters nothing.

That time, then.

He gets up, not bothering with clothes, and lets the sheet fall from his shoulders to his waist when he steps out of the TARDIS to discover that they're not in the chilly archives any more, but in the cosy, well-appointed cargo bay of Jack's ship.

"Ah," the Doctor says, rounding the side of his police box and grinning at Jack. "Wake you, did we? Sorry about the bang. Tried to let her down gently, but you know how these things are—space ship, two-wheel trolley, only four hands, that sort of thing."

Jack waves a hand in dismissal and goes instead to the open cargo door, examining the ramp and control panel, mildly disgruntled. She's undamaged, though, and Jack gives her a quick stroke. It'll be good to be up in the air again.

"You have your hands in _my_ ship's bits all the time." The Doctor's standing with his hands on his hips, frowning sullenly, when Jack looks back at him. "As if I wouldn't be careful with yours."

"It takes a practiced touch, young grasshopper," Jack throws back, then steps off the ramp, cringing a little as his bare feet hit the gritty, cold concrete floor. He wraps the sheet back up around his shoulders, trying to capture the last remnants of warmth.

It means he doesn't have any limbs free when he gets to Fa-Fe, so he just gives Ianto a full-body bump instead. Ianto glances around, eyes darting down and up as he takes in Jack's sheet, and then he sighs. "I cannot wait to get out of this suit," he says. "And never have to find myself in it again."

"I'll find you in it," Jack retorts, but restrained by the sheet as he is, his automatic motion to grope instead results in an elbow to Ianto's stomach. Ianto just grasps the offending limb without complaint, and Jack shuffles around without breaking the hold until they're face to face. He edges forward until he's standing on Ianto's feet instead of the cold sting of the floor, the leather shoes smooth and warm against the soles of Jack's feet. "Or: I'd be more than happy to get you out of it. Take your pick." He sways forward and Ianto's other hand shoots up to grab at Jack's other arm as well, both of them wobbling as Ianto tries to maintain their balance.

"Don't," Ianto groans, then, "You know what's been harder than anything?"

"This?" Jack bats the draping sheet away enough to finally get a hand free; he rubs it against the front of Ianto's trousers, squeezing a little when he feels Ianto's cock twitch in response.

"Yes, well, _exactly_," Ianto growls. "_You._ On Thursday the 25th of June, 2009, you insisted on getting me hot and bothered in the middle of the work day, before I came down here to escape you."

Jack laughs in dawning delight. "And so every day, when you reset…" He rubs at Ianto's growing erection with a bit more pressure.

Ianto's eyes squeeze shut. "Exactly," he says again, voice strained.

"I'm surprised it took you so long to jump the Doctor, honestly." Jack gentles his touch, stroking warm and steady until Ianto's almost purring. Jack can see it in the thrumming pulse at Ianto's throat.

"Well, once I'd calmed down from the initial panic and subsequent depression," Ianto says. "There was nothing left to distract me, except boredom." His head tips back a little and Jack restrains himself from biting his exposed throat; instead satisfying himself by taking in the visual effect on offer.

"Was there a lot of wanking going on?" Jack prompts when Ianto seems to be drifting off onto another mental plane. Not a bad one, necessarily; colour rising in his cheeks and cock rising in his pants. But Jack doesn't want to be left behind.

Ianto blinks back to Earth—or, well, to wherever they are; Jack's not quite sure, and the Doctor can never give a satisfactory answer either. "There was a lot of wanking going on," Ianto confirms.

Jack kisses the side of his neck, then, though just a dry brush of lips as he inhales deeply, breathing in all the delicious sex pheromones that have started to unfurl languorously from Ianto's skin. The pure human scent mingles with the chemicals of that cologne, a heady combination that drives Jack just a little bit wild, as it had on Thursday June 25, 2009, no doubt. "And I bet you could find a few things down here," he murmurs against Ianto's ear. "In F-H, Artifacts Indexed by Description, to play with."

Ianto snorts. "'Fuckable'?" he guesses correctly, then shivers when Jack bites his earlobe.

"Mmm."

"Well, to be honest, I tried," Ianto says. "I tried _everything_." The bleak tone in his voice tells Jack his mind is wandering away from sex again. Unfortunate but not unforseen. "But I think—I think I killed myself. Accidentally."

Jack draws back again to see Ianto's face, keeping his expression open and impassive as Ianto's eyes search his, letting Ianto take what he wants.

"I don't want to do that again," Ianto says, hesitantly, as if it's Jack's permission he needs.

Jack's not sure what to give him. He's got no keepsakes to remind him what it was like to be mortal; his instinctual fear of death replaced by something unfathomably more complex that he doesn't even like to think about, frankly.

"What's going to happen," Ianto says, changing the subject. Except not. "When you get the TARDIS out of here, and we reach reset time again?" His hands slide up Jack's arms to his shoulders, then back down again, a nervous gesture that doesn't seem to reassure him in the least. "I'm part of the bubble. Will I just… vanish again? End up back here again, in fucking F-H, with no TARDIS left for you to lock in on?"

Jack doesn't know. Part of him is relying on his sheer force of will to make it not so, everything he knows tells him that it will work. Fixed point versus unfixed possibility. His very presence here makes Ianto _exist_.

"I can't even _die_ here, Jack," Ianto says, firm and calm and underneath it, terrified.

"You're not going to," Jack says automatically, realising the redundancy of the statement a little too late. He moves his hand, slides both arms around Ianto's waist instead and clasps them behind Ianto's back, pulling Ianto against him. "I got your letter," he reasserts.

Ianto presses his face to the side of Jack's neck. The sheet, unanchored, slithers down Jack's back and to the floor.

"So?"

"So, when I got here, the Doctor destroyed _my_ copy, said there was one here already. You haven't even sent it yet."

"And yet here you are."

Jack nods. "So, you have to get out of here, because I get it, and I'm pretty sure Royal Mail don't run a service to a paradoxical possibility of F-H."

"They hardly even run one to Abergavenny," he says as if on autopilot, but then more firmly, "Okay." He wraps his arms around Jack's chest. "Okay." He pants into Jack's neck for another few moments, his hold on Jack tight, then says in the same calm, declarative tone: "You're naked."

"Yup."

Ianto slides his hands down to Jack's backside, squeezing briefly, then giving it a sharp pinch.

"Ow," Jack complains. "What was that for?"

"You opened my letter, you bastard, after I specifically asked you not to."

"So that was supposed to be punishment?" Jack asks, wriggling back into Ianto's hands. Ianto gives another squeeze. "I'd call that mixed messages."

"I'm grumpy at you, but I'm really fucking pleased about it, too," Ianto says. "What's so mixed about that?"

Jack wriggles again—if _rubbing off_ his unique position in the universe results in more than merely getting off, then surely it can't hurt to urge temporal physics along just a bit—and tightens his arms around Ianto's body. Just when things are starting to get interesting about the fact that Jack's pressed naked against a very suited Ianto, though, the whine of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver rings out from nearby. "That's your warning," the Doctor's voice calls out from behind the shelving unit. "I'm sending you a warning signal. I'm about to walk around the corner. Warning."

He walks around the corner. Jack sighs. He's not sure how Ianto's not a gibbering mess, when he reflects on just how long he must have been stuck here with the Doctor.

"Jack," the Doctor says, holding out his hand and wiggling his fingers authoritatively, sonic screwdriver held aloft in his other hand. "Vortex manipulator."

Jack sighs again, steps back onto the sheet. Ianto relinquishes his hold as Jack moves, shoving his hands in his pockets instead and adjusting himself unsubtly. The Doctor ignores him, ignores them both, just focussing on Jack's wrist strap. He fiddles with the settings on the sonic screwdriver briefly before directing it towards the strap's control panel.

"If you set fire to it, then I'm setting fire to you," Jack tells him, matter-of-fact, but the Doctor just scoffs, and the strap hasn't even twinged against Jack's skin by the time he finishes.

"Right," the Doctor says. "Come on then, time's a-wasting."

"I don't believe you," Jack mutters, but the Doctor ignores him. Jack follows, then stops, turns; holds out his hand to Ianto. Ianto grips onto it as if it's the last time he'll have a chance to do so, painfully transparent, but Jack's done all he can to convince Ianto that _it's going to be okay_. The proof, as they say, will be in the pudding.

"When all this pricking is over," Jack declares as he strides after the Doctor. "I'm booting the TARDIS off my ship and we're going to the Syllabub System." He glances back over his shoulder at Ianto's confused expression. "Populated by sentient puddings. A peaceful race. Very tactile."

"The Syllabubians?" the Doctor asks distractedly, catching the end of the conversation as they step into the TARDIS control room. He's concentrating on the console, but peers at Jack over his Elton John-esque spectacles. "Aren't you going to put some clothes on?"

"Nope," Jack says shortly. "Let's do this."

*

**5**

In fact, the Syllabub System is a perfect place for the not-so-metaphorical booting of the TARDIS off Jack's ship to occur. The Doctor frowns from the sidelines as Jack, complete with shitkicker boots that come halfway to his knees over the leather trousers—and Ianto is never going to get tired of that, _never_—nudges the anti-gravity platform the TARDIS is sitting on from the cargo bay into the airlock using his feet.

"This is totally unnecessary," the Doctor says. "She's working again, _I_ could move her there _myself_."

"Don't think so," Jack grunts, giving the platform another kick. "There'll be no dematerialising on my ship."

Ianto smirks. The Doctor sticks his tongue out at him. For the first time in a long time, Ianto doesn't feel the urge to rip it out of his head and stomp on it.

God, it's good to be free. And out of that fucking _suit_. Jack assures him that the pudding dress code is 'clothes: optional'.

There is one last thing, though; and Ianto's heart leaps half-out of his chest when he remembers it. "Shit," he spits. "Wait—" and bolts into the TARDIS, Doctor's questioning cry on his heels.

The suit's still there, in a crumpled pile on the the floor of his—his and Jack's—room, kicked to the corner with no remorse. Ianto fumbles through it, locating the crackle of paper in the jacket's breast pocket by touch, then runs back through the control room again. There's an irrational fear when he gets to the door that he'll be stepping back out into the archives, but when he emerges it's to the same polished brass glow of Jack's ship. Ianto lets out a sigh of relief, and finds that he's grinning.

He waves the envelope at Jack. "Almost forgot this."

Jack rolls his eyes, shaking his head in exasperation. Ianto's aware of him watching in amusement as he fishes in the Doctor's pocket for a pen, then leans the envelope against the side of the TARDIS to scrawl Jack's address onto it.

"Royal Mail?" the Doctor questions. "I hope you've got an era-appropriate stamp, because I certainly haven't."

"Of course you don't," Jack says drily. "It is legal tender, after all."

The Doctor gives him a pointedly quelling look.

"Toss it into the Vortex," Jack says. "Can't rely on you to get it to the right _planet_, let alone century."

"Fine," the Doctor says, holding out his hand for it. "Though I think you're being quite unnecessarily harsh. I did find him, after all." He tilts his head towards Ianto.

"Accidentally," Ianto retorts. He looks at the envelope in his hands, the _C.J.Harkness_ still wet. Instinctually, he turns it over and quickly kisses the sealed flap, then waves it in the air a couple more times to dry, and hands it over.

The Doctor doesn't comment, just slips it in his pocket, but when Ianto looks back, Jack's still watching him, face bright with his grin.

**Author's Note:**

> http://angstslashhope.livejournal.com/1603690.html  
> http://hope.dreamwidth.org/1623420.html


End file.
